"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." Orwell

"Men are so simple of mind and so dominated by immediate needs that the deceitful man can easily find those ready to be deceived."
Machiavelli

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

More Actual Conservatives Heard From

Lately I've referred here to a few throwback conservatives who see through the fog of fakery that is Mitt Romney and his liar-in-waiting and the party that coughed them up, and who rue what their party has become. Here's an article that quotes several more, including a former editor of William F Buckley's National Review, a former legal adviser to Ronald Reagan, and others. To me, my criticisms of today's R party are obvious and undeniably true. That Mitt Romney, and now Paul Ryan, have chosen to base their run to the finish line on demonstrable lies is a matter of public record.

If I'm a little more polemical about it than some, it's only that my innate sense of truth and honesty and Christian love are deeply offended by these guys and by the people who support them, who've elected such destructively dishonest people to the halls of Congress.

A couple of lines from the above referenced repository of residual reason:

“Having abandoned John McCain—a decent and independent-minded man—when he picked Sarah Palin, I most certainly could not support Governor Romney, who has been pandering to the extreme wing of my party from the start of his campaign for the nomination,” Fried wrote in an email. “Napoleon said that the man who will say anything will do anything.”

...

Wick Allison, former publisher of National Review under William F. Buckley and current publisher of The American Conservative, also reaffirms his Obama decision, albeit in anguished lukewarm tones. “I will probably vote for Obama, unless I have aGary Johnson–inspiration in the voting booth. (My vote in Texas is wasted anyway.),” Allison wrote in an email. “Romney is the opposite of conservative, with a plan that is fiscally reckless and a foreign policy that is unnecessarily militant. Obama has done about the best that could have been done, considering the united GOP opposition in Congress. My questions about Obamacare and my disappointment that we are not already out of Afghanistan are not enough to make me embrace a candidacy that even George W. Bush would have been repelled by—and, having had time to reflect on his own record, perhaps is.”

...“I am strongly in the president’s camp, even as his opposition has been doing its darnedest to overstate a few concerns about the usual subjects,” Kmiec wrote in an email. “Having served in Europe for the president, I know the very positive effect he has had on international relationships. His patience, discernment, and intelligence are much admired. Domestically, the president was handed the worst possible economic hand, and largely, though of course not perfectly, he has met the economic challenge … This is supposed to be Mr. Romney’s area of strength, but so far, his ideas are either indecipherable or a rather lame trickle-down do-over.”

“Yes, he could have handled the HHS contraceptive issue in a more accommodating and sensitive way to the formal teaching of my church, and he was again given some very poor advice on the scope of religious exemption that should have been provided an institution like his honorary alma mater, Notre Dame,” Kmiec added. “Obviously, there is much to do in terms of tax reform and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, but because that is so that is another basis for a second term.”

The article includes some undecideds and at least one nay-sayer. But my point is this: to consider Mitt Romney a feckless liar and Paul Ryan, at best, lousy at arithmetic, is not to be a blind partisan. Nor is the claim that Obama has done pretty well when you consider where he started and the roadblocks thrown in his way at every turn by teabaggRs. Compared to Europe, our recovery is like a garden in springtime. Nor is it Marxist Socialist Nazi-talk to believe that investing in our future is crucial, and that cutting taxes further while increasing defense spending and wiping out domestic spending will do the opposite.

I wish people who consider themselves true conservatives (I wonder how they'd define that) would let themselves do that thing they used to do: think. Which is the problem: the current R party has done all it can to keep people from thinking, to make those who do -- those damned experts, those unAmerican and hoity-toity intellectuals!! -- a subject of constant scorn.

3 comments:

I recently had an interesting and illuminating conversation with my very conservative, Arizona based, mother-in-law. She seemed to be truly embarrassed by the goings on of all AZ politicians. Despite her hate of Obamacare, she acknowledged interest and support due to mine and her daughters pre-existing conditions. She asked many questions about the law, seemed to be surprised with my answers and wanted to know more. And there was more... However, what transpired was that we found common ground, in that we both have a profound sense of being disenfranchised. It seemed the conversation went much easier when we acknowledged our political misery, as opposed to projection. The mother-in-law advised she would not be voting this election for the first time in decades- which suits me just fine.

I'd like to think finding common ground is a good start, most folks these days, it seems, relish in finding differences, even ones that don't exist. I can only say she hates Obamacare because it has to do with Obama- she's a good ol' Southern gal from way back.

For The Sake of My Sanity

Some will know me from my other blog, "Surgeonsblog." Of late I've given over to frothing at the mouth as the world descends into stupidity, and our politics and our citizens seem, in numbers enough to be meaningful, unable to see it. So for now I'm leaving surgery writing behind, if for no other reason than to defuse and diffuse my unrelenting sense of doom, and with no expectation of making a difference. These are things that, to me, are obvious. Except that, apparently, they aren't.

RWS™

RWS™: For those who drop by here in the middle, and wonder what it means: it's my shorthand for Right Wing Screamers, which includes such a long list it's tiresome to type it. (I distinguish these blowhards from thoughtful conservatives, of whom I sort of take it on faith that there must still be some.) You know who I mean: Palin, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Breitbart (RIP), Malkin, Savage, Levin, Ingraham, Doocey (more of a drooler than a screamer), Hewitt, Goldberg, Gingrich, Kristol, Scarborough (+/-), Bachmann, Inhofe, Bond, Broun, Boehner, Kelley, Santorum, Cain. To name but a few. Behold them in their unrepentant disregard for reality: the RWS™